Black History

Albany’s Historic Cherry Hill to Redesign Museum’s Core Tour

September 23, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Historic Cherry Hill in Albany‘s South End has announced that the museum has received two competitive federal planning grants for a large, multi-year reinterpretation project.

Entitled We Carry It Within Us: Reinterpretation at Historic Cherry Hill, the project was awarded $48,165 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and a $50,000 Inspire! Grant for Small Museums from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

With these grants, Historic Cherry Hill is now expected to complete plans for a new tour and orientation exhibit which incorporates new research and scholarship on underrepresented narratives at Cherry Hill. [Read more…] about Albany’s Historic Cherry Hill to Redesign Museum’s Core Tour

Swiss Americans, Neuchâtel and the Slave Trade

September 1, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

The earliest Swiss immigrants to North America were religious refugees. This group consisted predominantly of German speaking Anabaptists who began settling in eastern Pennsylvania from the mid-seventeenth century onward following a schism among the Brethren in 1693 which led to a division between Mennonites (named after Menno Simons of Friesland) and Amish (named after their leader Jakob Ammann who was born in the canton of Bern). [Read more…] about Swiss Americans, Neuchâtel and the Slave Trade

Stephen Myers of Albany: Abolitionist Writer, Advocate & Underground Railroad Activist

August 30, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Stephen Myers was a Black activist in connection with the Underground Railroad and African American rights in general. He was born and enslaved in Hoosick, Rensselaer County, New York State and raised when it was a slave state working on progressive abolition. He was the principal agent and a key writer for the Northern Star and Freeman’s Advocate, he was also the editor of The Elevator and The Telegraph and Temperance Journal.

As early as 1831 he was assisting fugitives from enslavement making their way to Canada. He was also active in 1827 with a group of little-known significance called the Clarkson Anti-slavery Society. As time went on he was involved in organizing and serving as a delegate to many of the Colored Men’s Conventions of the 1830s to the 1860s, to secure African American rights. He was involved in voting rights campaigns through the NYS Suffrage Association, was involved in organizing a school, and sued Albany Schools over segregation. [Read more…] about Stephen Myers of Albany: Abolitionist Writer, Advocate & Underground Railroad Activist

Calvin Fairbank: Imprisoned 17 Years For Helping Enslaved People to Freedom

August 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff 2 Comments

Rev. Calvin Cornelius Fairbank was born November 3, 1816 in Pike, Wyoming County, NY. He began his academic studies at a seminary in Lima, Livingston County, NY, and became a licensed preacher in 1840. In 1842 he was ordained an elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he graduated Oberlin College in Ohio two years later. At Oberlin he met John Mifflin Brown (1817-1893), a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and an Underground Railroad activist.

Fairbank was a radical abolitionist who not only spoke out against slavery, but actively worked to free as many enslaved people as he could. [Read more…] about Calvin Fairbank: Imprisoned 17 Years For Helping Enslaved People to Freedom

New York: A Metropolis of Murals

August 2, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

Plastered on walls in public spaces and civic buildings, scattered in hotels and restaurants, hidden in private mansions, a plenitude of murals form part of New York City’s infrastructure.

Although American interest in the medium originated in the 1893 World Fair which presented visitors with numerous large-scale murals, the vogue for this form of artistic expression dates back to the Great Depression. With the introduction of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1933, federal funds were made available to support and promote public art. Muralism became fashionable. [Read more…] about New York: A Metropolis of Murals

Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

July 28, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The Brooklyn Museum has announced “Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe,” an exhibit exploring themes of girlhood, play, and spirituality, contextualizing Rowe’s practice as a radical act of self-expression and liberation for a Black woman artist in the Jim Crow–era South, on view from from September 2nd, 2002, to January 1st, 2023. [Read more…] about Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe

Harlem on Fire: Langston Hughes & Wallace Henry Thurman

July 26, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

Before the arrival of European settlers, the flatland area that would become Harlem (originally: Nieuw Haarlem after the Dutch city of that name) was inhabited by the indigenous Munsee speakers, the Lenape. The first settlers from the Low Countries arrived in the late 1630s.

Harlem was an agricultural center under British rule (attempts to change the name of the community to “Lancaster” failed and the authorities reluctantly adopted the Anglicised name of Harlem). During the American Revolutionary War in September 1776 it was the site of the Battle of Harlem Heights. Later, rich elites built country houses there in order to escape from the city’s dirt and epidemics (Alexander Hamilton built his Harlem estate in 1802). [Read more…] about Harlem on Fire: Langston Hughes & Wallace Henry Thurman

Albany’s Philip Schuyler Statue, Slavery and History Reconsidered

July 21, 2022 by Bruce Dearstyne 5 Comments

A statue of Albany’s Philip Schuyler (1733-1804) has stood in front of City Hall since its dedication by Mayor William S. Hackett on June 25, 1925. The statue was a gift to the city from George C. Hawley, a beer baron whose family owned the Dobler Brewery in Albany, in memory of his wife Theodora M. Hawley.

In 2020, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan ordered it removed because Schuyler was a slaveholder. As Mayor Sheehan noted, removing the statue is one way of acknowledging the enduring legacy of slavery. [Read more…] about Albany’s Philip Schuyler Statue, Slavery and History Reconsidered

Rochester Underground Railroad Novel Gets Updated Edition

July 18, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Until recently when long-lost family mementos came to light, there was very little information about the daily life of Frederick and Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York.

There was even less about their five children. Historian Rose O’Keefe put everything she could find in Frederick and Anna Douglass in Rochester, New York: Their Home Was Open to All (The History Press, 2013). Though it had strong content, the book still left questions without answers. What would it have been like to live on the Underground Railroad? [Read more…] about Rochester Underground Railroad Novel Gets Updated Edition

The 1817 Hudson River Kidnapping Case: Details & Outcome

July 14, 2022 by David Fiske Leave a Comment

The recent New York Almanack post, “Kidnapped Into Slavery On The Hudson River” reprinted an early report of the crime by the New York Evening Post. The accused kidnappers were put on trial (and convicted).

This incident is one of the approximately 50 case studies included in my book Solomon Northup’s Kindred: The Kidnapping of Free Citizens before the Civil War (Praeger, 2016). The following is adapted from the account of the incident which appears there. [Read more…] about The 1817 Hudson River Kidnapping Case: Details & Outcome